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Without a doubt you’ll agree that the key to successful selling is promotion. You need to get your name and your product out there. You want the press, your colleagues and your prospective clients to know exactly what you can do for them. To do this, you must build your brand.

Your brand is more than just your product name, your catchy tag line or your well-designed web site. It’s also your credibility in the marketplace. Your brand is, simply, the way your customers perceive you and your product.

Stefanie Hartman, a marketing strategist who helps high-profile clients build a solid brand identity for themselves, explains branding this way. “When it comes to branding you have two choices: brand yourself or brand your value. It’s true that people don’t buy products; people by people, and so it may seem like branding yourself is the obvious choice. However, that can backfire.”

When you brand yourself, you become the main attraction. You are the face of your business - the only face - and clients will not settle for a stand in. This means that when your business becomes successful, you won’t be able to take time off. You’ll have to be everything to everyone, all the time. However when you choose to brand your value - that is, the information or the product that you’re offering - your schedule opens right up. You still get the recognition as an expert, but the product you’re selling becomes the main attraction. People will want the product first; you become secondary. A successful branding strategy is one that allows you to stay in the background.
If you’ve worked hard to build your brand and your product is selling well, don’t make the mistake of thinking that you’re finished. A successful sales person is always looking for ways to increase sales. Never think that you’re at the top.

“If your marketing person tells you that all you need to do is get your book to number one and you’ll be all set, you should run or stop paying them,” says Hartman. “Here’s why. A book is a lead generator. It will make you money, earn you recognition and credibility, get you new customers and get you press. But it’s not your main moneymaker.”

To make more money you need to increase sales. Develop a CD-Rom or DVD seminar series, give lectures or write ebooks or reports that compliment your primary product. By selling these other items, you not only increase sales, you solidify your brand. Branding is something that never ends; you’re never finished building it. You always have more to gain, new clients to reach, new goals to reach. Your brand will get you there.

The secret to becoming financially successful in today’s marketing is to brand your value, position yourself as an expert, and exploit that expertise. Believe in what you’re selling and offer your customers an outstanding value. “The important thing to remember,” says Hartman, ” is that you don’t have to sell out to sell. You can build your brand and establish yourself in the marketplace and still be an ethical person.”

Matt Bacak became “#1 Best Selling Author” in just a few short hours.
Recent Entrepreneur Magazine’s e-Biz radio show host is
turning Authors, Speakers, and Experts into Overnight Success Stories.
Discover The Secrets To Unleash The Powerful Promoter In You! Sign up
for Matt Bacak’s Promoting Tips Ezine ($100 value) just visit his
website at http://www.powerfulpromoter.com or http://promotingtips.com

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Internet marketing is all about hard results, not generic concepts of branding. Still, there are ways to go about branding your product or service on the net without spending a fortune.

Branding refers to the vague notion of creating an identity for a product, service or name with consumers. The classic example, of course, is Coca Cola. Being first on the scene, the company has been able to create such a strong name brand that most people use the word “coke” instead of soda when ordering. This is true even when they prefer Pepsi. In the world of marketing, we all bow before the marketing team that accomplished this branding. The Internet, however, is a different beast. That same marketing team would be crushed if they went after a similar strategy on the net.

The Internet is so large that branding is an expensive and difficult goal unless you are the first major presence in a niche. Sites like EBay and Amazon were the first major money players in their fields, giving them a huge advantage over subsequent competitors. Unless you are coming to a field with a lot of money and no current dominant site, your branding efforts are going to meet with failure or limited success at best. If you want to stick with it, the only cost effective and ultimately successful strategy is to pursue a width search engine optimization campaign.

Search engine optimization is simply an effort to get pages on your site ranked high in search results on the three big search engines - Google, Yahoo and MSN. To establish your brand, the best Internet marketing strategy is to identify every single phrase your prospects use to find services or products in your business area. You then build optimized pages for every single phrase and get them ranked.

This strategy has two benefits. First, it will produce free traffic to your site. If you build 200 pages and each gets 50 visitors a day, your site will receive 10,000 visitors a day. The second benefit is your brand becomes established. Regardless of what the prospect searches for, they keep seeing your site. This creates both recognition and credibility with the prospect as they tend to equate high rankings with quality. As they visit your site over and over, they will also become readily familiar with your unique selling position as presented on the site.

If you want to establish a brand, avoid wasting your money on banners and such unless you are in a niche that isn’t dominated by any single site. Instead, use the width search engine optimization tactic to establish your site and pick up free traffic.

Halstatt Pires is with MarketingTitan.com - Internet marketing firm in San Diego. Visit us to read more about a Internet marketing articles and a branding goal - Internet marketing strategy.

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Your marketing and advertising won’t be effective if your potential customers don’t believe the claims you make. So how can you prove your that you can do what you say you can?

Tone it down. Even if it is possible, your claim that dieters can lose 50 pounds in a month probably won’t be believed. Make it more realistic and representative of typical results.

Get customer testimonials. Let them see that others have had great results. Testimonials should be specific and include the customer’s real name for the most credibility.

Get endorsements from experts. Respected authorities who say that your product or service is good make you look good.

Positive media coverage will make you a star. Media coverage provides an implied endorsement from a respected source.

Show a track record. Have you been in business for 20 years? Customers are more comfortable doing business with someone they believe will be around if there is a problem after the sale.

Make yourself accessible. Give a phone number or e-mail address where customers can contact you (or support staff) directly with questions. Phone numbers are especially valuable in creating the awareness that you are approachable by clients. Add live chat at your web site to resolve support issues.

Cite statistics from a reputable source to back up your claims. There is a joke that 67.8% of all statistics are made up on the spot. When you use statistics, tell where they came from.

And, never make claims that aren’t true. If you are caught in a lie, it can be difficult or impossible to reclaim the trust of your customers.

Copyright Cathy Stucker. As the Idea Lady, Cathy Stucker can help you attract customers and make yourself famous with creative strategies that help your business excel. Get free marketing tips and discover what she can do for you at http://www.IdeaLady.com/.

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